Dr Philipp Frankel

Dr. Philipp Frankel is a Dalton Institute and Rolls Royce sponsored Research Fellow in the School of Materials at the University of Manchester. His current research focuses on the degradation of nuclear materials and the impact of irradiation damage. He is currently leading the Pellet Cladding Interaction (PCI) work package of a EPSRC supported Collaborative Research Programme on Providing A nuclear fuel Cycle In the UK For Implementing Carbon reduction (PACIFIC) as well as the irradiation work package of Carbides for future fission environments (CaFFE) programme.

He also leads the Manchester activities for EU Horizon 2020 Il Trovatore program on Innovative cladding materials for advanced accident-tolerant energy systems.

Philipp studied for an Engineering Doctorate at Birmingham University in collaboration with Rolls Royce Plc., investigating the influence of residual stresses that arise during processing as well as in-service on the performance of aerospace materials, focusing on the use of large-scale synchrotron & neutron facilities. Following his EngD, he worked as a PDRA on the Mechanistic Understanding of Zirconium Corrosion (MUZIC) consortia funded through the by the EPSRC ‘Towards a Sustainable Energy Economy Programme' and subsequently on an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship project investigating irradiation growth and creep in zirconium alloys.

His research interests lie in understanding the mechanisms that are important for the degradation of materials used in both aerospace and nuclear sectors. With a particular emphasis on using state-of-the-art characterisation tools to investigate microstructural changes, phase transformation and residual stress evolution during production and in-service. He is an active user of large-scale research facilities such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, BESSY II in Berlin and Diamond and ISIS in Oxfordshire, UK.

The analysis of residual stresses is of particular interest, making use of non-destructive diffraction based techniques as well as relaxation based methods. He is currenlty involved joint project between University of Manchester and Open University seeking to to further develop the novel residual stress measurement technique known as the Contour Method.